Many witches and paganisten consider Samhain as the new year celebration. Samhain is the Celtic new year which start already on the eve of November 1. The earth will now rest after the fruit is gone and the seeds spread. The festival is related to the season change and the cycle of living.

During this period the earth can prepare itself to a new beginning. For this reason you can see back on your own life that has past, let old things go and make preparations for something new.

Samhain is the lastest harvest feast. We think thereby especially of nuts, seeds, the last apples, the last turnip plants. Everything must be inside before the frost enters. Samhain is also the time of the meat. Hams are hung, sausage is made.

If you don't have enough in stock to pass the winter, then it will be a hard time for you. For us, with supermarkets which have to offer always enough, is that hard to imagine, but in many parts of the world the winter stock still is very important.

Samhain is as counterpart of Beltain on the year wheel, also a festival for the worship of the deads. By the witches this is still so. They believe that the veil between the world of the living and the world of the deads is then the thinnest.
On this day by many a meal is organised and extra plates are added for the deceasedes with there favorite meal. For the window candles are placed so that their loved ones can find their way home.

What can you do to celebrate it?
* if you have a altar: put on things that remind you to your loved ones.
* decorate your house or altar with brown, black, purple, dark green and/or dark red
* decorate your house or altar with pumpkins, nuts, autumn leaves mixed with always green plants
* food, wine and a plate with knife, fork and spoon and a napkin to invite the deceasedes symbolically.
* put wine and something to eat outside for the spirits which come by
* light a candle in your window (preferably gold or orange color)

Activities:
* cut out pumpkins and make pumpkin soup to eat.
* write letters to deceasedes you still would something to tell (you can put the letter for example in an envelope on your altar during a number of days and then read it out loud during a samhain rituel and afterwards burn or bury it)
* visiting graves of deceasedes (take for example what cookies or other food to leave it there)

There are several origins which do the round concerning Jack-O-Lantern and that explains the name of the hollow pumpkin.

* An old Irish tale tells about a man called Jack, which roamed round by the cold nights because he couldn't enter heaven or hell. To light his way he had a piece of charcoal from the purgatory in its possession, but this was too hot to hold, so he put it into a hollow turnip that actual was for eating and used it as a lantarn.

* The old Celts who hung a hollow turnip on their door with inside a piece of charcoal, to drive off the bad spirits and the good spirits to attract.

* The light that burns in the pumpkin is a symbol for the light of living that shines after death. One says that a flickering candle flame in a pumpkin is a sign that a deceased ancestor or a spirit touches the flame.

Be kind to Mother Nature

"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."~Albert Einstein

The beauty of nature

Spread your wings and let the fairy in you fly! ~Author Unknown

A fairy ...

When you feel a little breeze, or notice a tickle, or need to sneeze or find your things are rearranged or something seems a little strange, look very closely and you might see sparkly dust, or a buzzing bee: Behold! a fairy with gossamer wings has come to show you wonderful things.